Preview Choppy in V9 but Fine in Plat Pro 9

Byron K wrote on 5/12/2009, 12:36 PM

Hello,
I just installed Vegas 9 and must say it's very nice. Had a few issues with CRC errors on the install but after re-downloading it a 4th time it installed fine.

Previewing projects done in Platinum Pro 9 are very choppy even in Draft mode. These projects play fine in Platinum Pro 9.

Are there any settings that I can make to have these play better in Vegas 9? I've already tried to disable audio and video effects but still very choppy.

I purchased the upgrade because I need additional video and audio tracks.

I thought Platinum Pro 9 and Vegas Pro 9 video engines were the same? They are both PRO right. except Platinum Pro 9 just has 4 tracks of video?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

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Comments

ScorpioProd wrote on 5/20/2009, 8:16 PM

It seems like preview improvements are very hardware and OS specific.

For instance, on my old dual-Xeon 2.8GHz edit system with a nVidia 6600GT graphics card running WinXP SP3 32-bit, Vegas Pro 9 made a BIG improvement in preview performance for me.

I can look at my CPU load and see that it is using a lot more CPU resources when playing the preview, which results in better real-time performance for me compared to what Vegas Pro 8 would use, and more evenly across my two real and two HT cores.

I did some tests with DV footage last night, preview set for Preview(auto):

Vegas Pro 8:

Single DV stream 29.95fps.
Add legal colors limiter 26fps.
Add color correction 20fps.
Add second DV stream overlaid at 50% opacity 14fps.

Vegas Pro 9:

Single DV stream 29.95fps.
Add legal colors limiter 29.95fps.
Add color correction 29.95fps.
Add second DV stream overlaid at 50% opacity 24fps.

That's a BIG difference!!! :)

Vegas Pro 8:

Single DV stream 29.95fps.
Add second DV stream overlaid at 50% opacity 26fps.

Vegas Pro 9:

Single DV stream 29.95fps.
Add second DV stream overlaid at 50% opacity 29.95fps.
Add legal colors limiter 29.95fps.

So for this old machine, Vegas Pro 9 previews with DV much better.

MTuggy wrote on 5/20/2009, 10:54 PM

After reading this thread, I am wondering how many threads each of you is running in your Options on your quadcore machines - 2 or 4 (or more)? Is the playback issue tied to this or your page file size? I found that cutting back to 2 threads on my quadcore improved my rendering times in the 32 bit Pro version (but not my playback as this should only affect rendering).

Also, are your project properties based on the video footage characteristics or are you using a default project property that is may not necessarily match up with the video your camera is shooting? That makes a huge difference in preview playback.

MT

Byron K wrote on 5/21/2009, 2:41 AM

Thanks for the replies.

I don't understand why preview in Vegas 9 is so bad compared to preview in Platinum 9. Playback in half resolution in any preview mode is choppy.

Here's another clip comparing Vegas 9 and Platinum 9. Only 2 video tracks no audio. Gausian blur effect and some panning. This plays smooth as silk in Platinum 9 Draft and Preview.

http://s648.photobucket.com/albums/uu208/bk-vegas/?action=view&current=hawaiicarshow2009.flv

I'm still working with tech support.

JBowren wrote on 5/28/2009, 7:45 PM

BUG ????

I don't know if this is a bug or has been already mentioned.

I too have had less fps on my preview window (no second monitor) in V9 pro. Doesn't matter what footage SD, HD

When it acts up I change the resolution to something else ie. Preview-Auto, Good-Full
Then right away change it back to what I prefer to use and bam it runs much much better. Most of the time back a 29.97 like it should...

Does this work for you.

josh

PassTheHat wrote on 6/1/2009, 4:32 PM

Hi!

I’m new to Vegas (Pro 9) coming over from FCE. I’ve been having the choppy preview issue.

Frame rates were 6 to 8 at best no matter which setting. I did the rest of the test at Preview Half because that had the best frame rate to start.

I tried changing the Max Preview RAM to the max available but it didn’t matter. I went into the internal settings and gave it twice that and tried it at that setting without improvement.

I tried to play the same clip over and over while eyeballing the task manager. I found that it started going faster and fast. By the 6th time through the footage, it was playing a a constant 23.976 (Canon HG20 24P footage converted by NeoScene to CineForm Codec 1080 24P).

The task manager was showing larger and larger page file access as the speed increased. Both processors continued to show equal use and pegged up into the 66% range once the footage was playing at full speed.

I’m thinking that this is some kind of caching problem as the machine can obviously play the footage once it’s been played enough times to be fully in RAM.

Finally, if I quit the program and restart it, the 6 times play trick must be repeated to get it to play at the right speed. Also, changing preview modes makes the speed reset to slow and the 6 times play trick has to be repeated.

I’m running 32 bit Vegas Pro 9 under 32 bit Windows XP Pro on a Unibody MacBook with 4 GB RAM and the 2.0 gHz Intel CoreDuo and the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (256 MB VRAM that shows up as 512MB in Windows).

I hope that this helps to solve the problem. I will submit a ticket once I figure out where. I’m going to post over at the dvinfo.net forum as well.

blink3times wrote on 6/1/2009, 4:54 PM

"I tried changing the Max Preview RAM to the max available but it didn’t matter. I went into the internal settings and gave it twice that and tried it at that setting without improvement."

Preview ram has little to do with preview in the way that you're using it and setting it too high will cause problems in other areas.

To use preview ram you highlight the area you wish to preview at full frame rate (usually a transition or something like that) then press SHIFT-B. Your highlighted area will be loaded into ram for full playback. Increase your preview ram ONLY if you run out while loading the highlighted area. If you don't use SHIFT-B then the ram that you set for dynamic playback is simply wasted.

As for re-playing the same clip, or section over again... each time you play a section, more of it is loaded into memory.... hence the increase in memory usage and smoothness when re-playing.

Vegas is almost all memory and cpu driven so the more mem you have and the faster the cpu, the better it will react.

Your video card is showing up as 512 because it's using SHARED ram (it's borrowing some of your ram... which is a bit of a waste.... this is just a guess mind you.... I do PC's not macs so I'm geared to think PC) so you should go into BIOS and reset the shared ram to 0. With the 512 ram that the video card is taking (or actually 256), the ram required to run your machine and windows... you don't have a lot left to play with. I would kill as many running processes as possible so that you can increase the amount of ram supplied to Vegas. I'm not exactly sure how mac books work but if they have some sort of adjustable page file like in PC's then I would also adjust that size a bit bigger.

PassTheHat wrote on 6/1/2009, 5:35 PM

Page file is set in Windows and I increased it to equal the amount of Actual RAM (4GB).

Thanks for the shift-B and Preview RAM explanation. I didn’t understand it before.

There is no way to set the VRAM differently as it shows up correctly on the Mac side (256MB VRAM) unless there’s a setting in Windows XP that I can adjust.

luces1 wrote on 6/2/2009, 8:49 AM

I JUST purchased VP9 last night and I was having the same problem with choppy preview and I was a bit bummed b/c the trial of VP8 was great. Anyhow,I was working with an MP4 video file,but avi and other native Windows formats work good. Kind of a bummer b/c the camera I am using for now saves it's video as MP4,so I'll have to pre convert somehow. Any info when preview will work with ALL the listed formats?

luces

Byron K wrote on 7/22/2009, 10:16 AM

Look like 9a fixed the issue with playback. Playback in general is much better and smoother! There was also an issue with playback getting progressively choppy as work on the project continued and had to reload the app to resolve the choppiness. This seems to also have been fixed.

I also opened a ticket w/ Sony on this.

Anyway I wouldn't have expected any dot.zero release to be bug free but to me obviously a fine update indeed.

Thanks!

thereddragon wrote on 8/7/2009, 8:25 AM

I just upgraded from V9 to V9Pro and my video is lagging in the preview terribly. And I have the 9.0A build.

I have a quad core with 4GB of Ram

My video I brought in is a video Ive already completed I just wanted to play around with it. Its a WMV file..Ive added no transistions or anything im just playing the original rendered footage. I have the preview the same as the footage and so on. This is terrible

Revaya wrote on 8/7/2009, 1:26 PM

I've got the same issue as Mr dragon above me. What's wrong with Vegas??

Computer: Brand new dell studio took out of the box this week
windows vista
6GB RAM
1000 GB hard drive
2.67 Ghz

Vegas build 9.0a

so why does the preivew have to lag

pressing shift+b takes forever to render. it is unacceptable that the preview does not work immediately, even for many tracks at once, much less 2!!!!

someone help! please!